Give the paranoiac in your life at least a few blissful moments of mental peace with a Dropcam Pro home-monitoring camera. Within minutes of setting it up, he'll be able to use an app or Dropcam's website to see what the camera sees—and the camera sees everything. An HD feed, infrared for lights-out night vision, real-time alerts if movement is sensed, and a zoom-in enhance function mean no one will ever steal his precious Desert Storm trading cards.

After years of stagnancy ever since the RAZR's heyday (Remember those??), Motorola comes fresh off its acquisition by Google with a pair of stellar Android offerings: The Moto G, at a mere $179 off contract, comes packing very respectable specs and cutting-edge software, while the Moto X combines a set of killer features (they're hard to explain, but trust us, they'll soon be indispensable), including the ability to design and colorize your own, that make it probably the best fruit-free smartphone for all seasons right now. The latter's also a Benjamin on contract, _or _it's on sale Monday, December 9th for $349 unlocked. Best line up outside your interwebs.

Damn near every computer has a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) chip inside—it's what translates the ones and zeroes of your iTunes library into the beautiful music pouring forth from the speakers. And most built-in DACs, well, suck. So the professional audiosmiths at Meridian created the Explorer, a simple aluminum tube that uses a bunch of math to make all those bits and bytes sound noticeably better. Bass tightens up, vocals come to the front, never-heard details bubble up. And after using your gift for the first time, your music-nerd friend gives you an awkwardly long, appreciative hug.

Tech these days is all brushed aluminum and plastic, as if modern life weren't sterile enough. Before you get a sad cubicle plant that will die for lack of sunlight in a existentially morbid parable of your own sad, sedentary existence, consider naturalizing your office space with these keyboards and trackpads, which have the _de rigueur _level of tasteful minimalism, but with the satisfying woodsiness of solid maple or walnut. It's not quite Thoreau, but it will add a degree of outdoor Zen as you reply to each and every office-wide memo.

A few years back, two French buddies set out to build utterly beautiful, effortlessly stylish headphones; what they created was the Emily Ratajkowski of wearable audio gear. The Aedle VK-1’s materials are sumptuous: aluminum for all the structural parts; lambskin leather wherever they touch your head. The design is pared-down to perfection. The sound is powerful and punchy. And if you needed more proof that a set of headphones are the freshest fashion accessory, here you go: select Ralph Lauren stores will soon carry the tan VK-1, while Rick Owens stores will stock the black.

Those little Roombas have been around so long, it's a surprise they haven't revolted even a little yet. And now bolstering the robot armies of the future is the Braava, which mops your hard surfaces using disposable or reusable cloths, like a Swiffer WetJet on autopilot. If you're an urban apartment dweller like us, this is probably the one you've been waiting for—you know, aside from some kind of fantastical _dish_washing machine. But let's not dream too big.

The new iPad may be the most perfect tablet out there. Part of it is its size: You can thumb type as easily as you can on a smartphone, it's easier to hold when gaming, and, unlike larger tablets, you’ll actually bring it everywhere without a second thought. And even though the Mini comes in a smaller package, it still packs similar power to its bigger brother: a crazy beautiful Retina display, a snappy A7 processor, and two antennas for better WiFi reception.

Sous-vide, the practice of heating vacuum-sealed bags of food in a temperature-controlled water bath, is the hottest thing in cooking these days, allowing you to prepare perfectly medium-rare steak, supremely moist chicken, and the most intensely carrot-like carrots you've ever tasted, all without even worrying about setting a timer. And it's been outside the budget of home cooks until now, with products like the Sansaire circulator, which attaches to the pot of your choice—and might cost less than it, to boot. So with all that, it's not just a good gift for the pretentious "molecular" chef in your life; it might just be the future of home cooking.

There's no easier way to rig up your home with wireless audio than Sonos's plug-it-in-and-forget-it system, and the company's new Playbar only takes that promise a step further. This is double-duty technology—a smart sound bar that will take over for a TV's junky built-in speakers, as well as crank jams in the living room. It delivers virtual surround sound, and has some nifty tricks, too, like a dialogue enhancement for making Franco's stoner mumbling comprehensible. And the Sonos Playbar will automatically adjust its audio tuning depending on whether it's set flat or mounted on a wall. That's right—the speakers are now self-aware.

Sometimes a guy's just got to read—no Twitter, no Facebook, no e-mails. There’s real books, of course. Nothing wrong with that. But then there are also e-readers, which, in this era of smartphones and tablets, feel almost like a throwback. Fortunately, the Kindle Paperwhite has just enough techie features to make you feel like you’re not riding a horse in a supersonic world. This latest version creates flashcards of words you look up—because big words beat the emoji you’ve been using lately—and lets you jump to various parts of a book without losing your place. And like the previous-generation Kindle, it tells you the amount of time left in the entire book or chapter. 30 minutes left in this chapter? Let’s do that, instead of a half hour of Candy Crush.

There are roughly three billion ways to stream video content to your TV, with Apple TV and Roku at the top of the “easy and affordable” pile. If your pal is already committed to the Tao of Jobs, then your decision is made. If not, the Roku offers more “channels” for getting your boob-tube fix, plus one killer app: a headphone jack in the remote control. No more corrupting your kid when you decide to watch Reservoir Dogs for the seventeenth time.